Ed Balls - Keynesian Idiot

Mr Balls believes giving those on modest incomes more money to spend would boost growthLabour shadow chancellor Ed Balls has called for "decisive action ... to boost growth", offering suggestions for tax cuts in next month's Budget.

Mr Balls, you are an absolute joke! We are flat stoney broke.If I ran my household budget like you would run the country they'd have it repossesed in no time. You can't keep borrowing money, there comes a time when you have to just stop and pay it back.

I think we need to consider from now on three important things that techocratic economists tend to ignore. Because technically, Balls is, of course, (short term) correct and therefore difficult to argue against nor even disprove in a politician's timescale. And the argument basically goes round in circles because of this.

1. The moral hazards of monetary and taxation policy. Causes and effects long term on people's attitudes and actions.

2. How money is spent. The quality of gdp, not just its short term nominal level. Is money spent going to generate even more than its cost? Wrest back control of the word "investment".

3. Will our action help or hinder the adjustment to the trade balance.

If you have these at the heart of your consideration, I think that is a good starting point.

As far as I can tell Keynesians will always be right while growth is measured in the domestic currency.

The old example is that of Zimbabwe who's growth has been absolutely spectacular.

If you want to see our real growth look at our GDP measured in dollars (or even better commodities).

And I tell you we have learned from past mistakes.Just as you cannot spend your way out of recession, you cannot, in a global economy, simply spend your way through recovery either.(Gordon Brown, Labour Party Annual Conference, 29 September 1997)

So, housing affordability is better than it has ever been, but no-one can take advantage of this because they can't afford the houses. I see.cybernoid - 7th August 2010

Ok, I'm not an economist but Keynesian stimulus ain't the solution. I spent 6 years in Japan and saw those bridges to nowhere and walked the expensive marbled tiling to Shinjuku station in Tokyo

Tell the people the truth that the last 15 years have been an illusion based on debt and if we keep borrowing the can will be thrown back at us!

Tell the people that to prosper that we need to make things that people want to buy which means a little less service jobs and more manufacturing

Tell the banksters to f-off and let all those that took risks to get their fingers burnt. Stop propping them up and use the money to protect depositors. Maybe then they will make prudent future investments with moral hazard on the cards if they aren't to coin a phrase from Brown *ahem* prudent!

Raise interest rates! Stuff it, if people who have eye watering debts get burnt then so be it. I'm fed up of propping up the system with my savings. Capitalism needs capital from savings and ZIRP ain't doing shit!

I need to put a lot more thought to right the wrongs of recent years but in summary lets do the same as Iceland, take the pain now, the system needs a massive reset and then we can rebuild the economy from the ashes

Raise interest rates and take a recessionary hit like Iceland did to clear out the deadwood businesses and houses.

sell off the banks and let them go bankrupt.

replace all benefits with a citizens income (not including disability benefits)

simplify all income tax and NI into a flat tax at 35%-40% (with no personal allowance due to citizens income) this would mean that work always paid more than not working.

remove the minimum wage (since the citizens income should be sufficient to keep people in food)

remove all subsidies and tax breaks from the corporation tax code and cut corporation tax to 10%-15% (look to cut this to 0% in the future)

tinkering is not good enough - we need a wholesale change in attitude.

This would hurt like hell, but we need to pull the scab off and clean out the wound, not let it fester into gangrene.

Ok, I'm not an economist but Keynesian stimulus ain't the solution. I spent 6 years in Japan and saw those bridges to nowhere and walked the expensive marbled tiling to Shinjuku station in Tokyo

Tell the people the truth that the last 15 years have been an illusion based on debt and if we keep borrowing the can will be thrown back at us!

Tell the people that to prosper that we need to make things that people want to buy which means a little less service jobs and more manufacturing

Tell the banksters to f-off and let all those that took risks to get their fingers burnt. Stop propping them up and use the money to protect depositors. Maybe then they will make prudent future investments with moral hazard on the cards if they aren't to coin a phrase from Brown *ahem* prudent!

Raise interest rates! Stuff it, if people who have eye watering debts get burnt then so be it. I'm fed up of propping up the system with my savings. Capitalism needs capital from savings and ZIRP ain't doing shit!

I need to put a lot more thought to right the wrongs of recent years but in summary lets do the same as Iceland, take the pain now, the system needs a massive reset and then we can rebuild the economy from the ashes

A simple policy to help would be to cut the top levels of pay in the public sector, and use the money saved to employ people directly. Reducing average pay will reduce savings, increasing the multiplier effect. You will also put more people to work with the same money.

Cutting pay in the public sector so that average pay is below that of the private sector, would do far more for employment and growth than any increase in deficit spending would.

I think we need to consider from now on three important things that techocratic economists tend to ignore. Because technically, Balls is, of course, (short term) correct and therefore difficult to argue against nor even disprove in a politician's timescale. And the argument basically goes round in circles because of this.

1. The moral hazards of monetary and taxation policy. Causes and effects long term on people's attitudes and actions.

2. How money is spent. The quality of gdp, not just its short term nominal level. Is money spent going to generate even more than its cost? Wrest back control of the word "investment".

3. Will our action help or hinder the adjustment to the trade balance.

If you have these at the heart of your consideration, I think that is a good starting point.

you can leave out 2 and 3 , they are subsets of 1, it is 1 that will in effect determine any economies long term viability as behaviour adapts to it, of course the age old problem is what is moral? everyone has their own opinion but fundamentally the states opinion isnt generally based in morality but its own, and the actors decidng it, benefit, im sure youd get a much better success rate of morality within the state if all the decision makers, MPs, councillors, whatever players were decided by raffle out of the popn every 4/5 years, but the self interest of the state and its actors would never allow for such, at least not in our lifetimes

Injecting more money into the economy is only beneficial when specifically to targeted one of these efficiency improving areas. Even then all you are doing is temporarily shifting the overall balance of wealth towards the efficiency improving area in the hope that the efficiency increase will offset the wealth you have effectively sucked out of everywhere else. Simple giving people more "money to spend" does jack sh*t.

Edited by goldbug9999, 19 February 2012 - 10:59 AM.

.. instead of supporting productive industry by extending credit to increase tangible capital investment, the banking system has extended credit mainly (about 80 percent in the United States and most English-speaking countries) to buy real estate and load it down with debt. The result is that rental income is used to pay interest to the banks rather than to pay taxes. This forces governments to tax wages, profits and sales. That increases the cost of living and doing business, on top of the interest charge.

to be fair whilst he didn't come up with anything much himself, he made a valid point that Osborne is doing very little to promote growth.

It is interesting to note his points about corporation tax and the 50%, obviously due to the availability of off shore accounts, such things will never make any difference.

However David Davies was sort of right when he said lowering VAT wouldn't help either as the proles would by imported TVs, Dave they won't they will just nick them.

The real answer, the real elephant in the room that none of them will mention, costs and cost of living. So to a certain extent Ed was right.However printing money to sustain house prices and inflation is not going to help.

Edited by frederico, 19 February 2012 - 11:00 AM.

Latest news, 5000 jobs to be created transferred to ASDA, the new high tech, knowledge based economy is powering ahead.

McDonald's says it will create 2,500 new jobs across the UK this year, taking its workforce to 90,000

to be fair whilst he didn't come up with anything much himself, he made a valid point that Osborne is doing very little to promote growth.

It is interesting to note his points about corporation tax and the 50%, obviously due to the availability of off shore accounts, such things will never make any difference.

However David Davies was sort of right when he said lowering VAT wouldn't help either as the proles would by imported TVs, Dave they won't they will just nick them.

The real answer, the real elephant in the room that none of them will mention, costs and cost of living. So to a certain extent Ed was right.However printing money to sustain house prices and inflation is not going to help.

no politician of any shade will promote growth because the only way to promote it is to wipe out the malinvestment and cause immense pain, at some point exactly that will happen on someones watch whether they like it or not and rather than been lorded as an economic god they will be castigated as a moron (see Papandreous popularity as he came to power in the eye of the storm), however whoever takes over after destruction of most malinvestment will be set for the growth phase and no matter how imbecilic their economic policy they will be lorded as an economic genius.

For a recent example of this see Mc Doom (but you can go right back to every PM before him), he was only castigated when the economy started fixing itself so that it could if left to do its thing ultimately produce real growth, Everyone was happy as larry when he spent the previous years destroying any possibility of Real Growth

As a politician (who generally only have an interest in how they are viewed at the time) youd have to be a right bellend to try setting up the future real growth now